Over time, as the Israeli liaison established a friendly working relationship with the KH-11 officers, the original strictures became blurred. The Israeli officer was seen as an ally, relaying Israel’s intelligence needs to the directors of the KH-11 program. What could it hurt to help them out on an informal basis? As a senior intelligence officer told author Seymour Hersh, “It was in our national interest to make sure in 1981 that the Israelis were going to survive.” There was also the conviction that if Israel were refused intelligence, it would simply turn around and lobby supporters in Congress for the money to build its own satellite. By 1981, less than two years after Carter had first given them limited access to KH-11, Israel was extracting virtually any photograph they wanted, including satellite photographs of al-Tuwaitha. Israel had even managed to finagle a seat on the tasking committee to request its own flyovers. The mission pilots at Ramat David as well as most of the high command were never told of the existence of the photographs, but Mossad had seen them all. And so Hofi knew for certain that Osirak would be hot by midsummer 1981.
Soon after Kivity and Saltovitz returned from the NRC, General Ivry called Raz and Nachumi to Tel Aviv. The two pilots flew the sixty miles south in a fixed-wing prop plane, the farm fields of the Jezreel beneath giving way to the small villages and suburbs like Hod Ha’sharon and Ramat Gan outside Tel Aviv. Soon the winking warning lights showed atop the chimney standing sentinel at the north end of Ha’ Yarkon Street. Four months had passed since the delivery of the squadron’s first four F-16s to Ramat David. The squadron now had twelve F-16s of the Block 5 model, the original “Iranian” planes ordered in 1978. More planes from the current generation, Block 10, which included GD’s new upgrades to the navigation, electrical, and weapons systems, were already coming off the production lines. IAF planned that ultimately there would be three F-16A/B squadrons. Raz would lead the first mission squadron of eight planes—though no one outside of high command was to know the target. The pilots had been told only to train in long-range, low-level navigation.
Raz and Nachumi took their seats in Ivry’s office, and after the usual small talk, the general got quickly to the point.
“I want you to concentrate on an air-to-ground mission,” he said, “air-to-ground” being militaryspeak for “bombing.”
Nachumi saw Raz raise his eyebrows ever so slightly. Otherwise he showed no emotion.
“Remember, this is classified,” Ivry said levelly. “You’re not to discuss the mission with anyone. Not even your wives.”
The men could have smiled. So far, there had been almost nothing to discuss. Following the first meeting in May when Ivry had told him to train for long-range navigation, Raz had gone straight to the Ramat David operations room and looked at the huge map of the Middle East mounted on the wall. Using a calculator, he quickly determined the optimum distance of the F-16 to be 560 miles. He cut a piece of string to match the map’s legend of 600 miles, pinned one end of the string at Tel Aviv and then traced a 600-mile circle around the map. Looking at his rotating bull’s-eye, Raz guessed somewhere inside Syria.
Ilan Ramon was the youngest of the eight pilots. He was twenty-seven and the only bachelor in the squadron. With thick dark hair and boyish good looks, he usually commanded the attention of any unattached female within hailing distance. But his good-natured, self-effacing charm and studious devotion to work also made him a favorite among the men. So did the fact that Ramon’s mother and grandmother were both Holocaust survivors who had made their way to Israel after surviving the Auschwitz death camp. Ramon was acutely aware of his family’s legacy, an unspoken yet profound conviction that seemed to bestow a kind of nobility to his youth and made his easy manner and openness all that more engaging. Ramon had been assigned as the squadron navigator. As a result, early on he had been apprised of the mission profile: a low-level, 600-mile flight with a tailwind to mission target; then a 600-mile, low-high return (which meant climbing and flying at high altitude) into headwinds. In the Middle East the prevailing winds are always easterly, blown in from the Mediterranean Sea, which sits off the western coast of Israel. Going with a tailwind meant flying east: looking 600 miles to the east on the map, Ramon was led to only one conclusion—Iraq. But where in Iraq, he wondered . . . Baghdad?
Hagai Katz, too, knew that a tailwind meant east, and that most likely indicated Iraq as the target. Then in September, Katz saw the headlines about the mysterious explosions at the Rome headquarters of SNIA, which was doing business with Hussein. Immediately he recognized Mossad’s handiwork and quickly put two and two together to come up with the Osirak reactor at al-Tuwaitha. As the realization dawned on him, he felt surprised, apprehensive, and elated all at the same time. Though he felt sure he had divined the target, Katz, remembering his security agreement, vowed to keep it to himself.